Widget Basics

Widget Basics

A widget is a customizable block of content that fits into the right-hand column of our site. Here, #1 is the Custom Menu [advanced] widget, #2 is an RSS feed widget, and #3 is the image widget. Everything below the first widget is optional.

Instructions

Once you log into the backend of your site, you can find "Widgets" in the menu. All you have to do is drag the widget you want from the area on the left to the area called "Sidebar: Main" shown on the right. If you click the little arrow on each widget, there is usually some info you can customize. For example:

Favorite Widgets:

Widgets are fun, but be careful not to add too many! They usually appear on every page, and too many can get clumsy.

Upload an image, give it a title and a caption, and/or a link to another webpage. If you leave the width & height blank, it should fill 100% of the widget area. This can be a good way to highlight important webpages that are not in your menu.

Social Media Stream

You can either commit an entire page to the stream, or add the stream to a widget. You can pull feeds from your Facebook page(s), Twitter, Google Plus, RSS (blogs), Flickr, Delicious, YouTube, Pinterest, last.fm, Dribble, Vimeo, Stumbleupon, DeviantArt, Tumblr, and/or Instagram. You can customize the colors and change the number of results the stream brings in. Find all these settings under Widgets > Social Stream. Only Administrators and Editors have access to this. Let Anna know if you have trouble finding your Facebook ID number or understanding what other settings mean. To use Wagner colors, enter the following hex codes:

Green: #004331

Gold: #A78E3D

Maroon: #571C1F

Navy: #023D61

Brown: #563019

RSS Feed

Pull in a feed from blog posts — either from your own site, or from another blog. For our site, the RSS feed URL will be http://wagner.edu/your-site/category/category-name/feed. For example, http://wagner.edu/english/category/english-news/feed.

Shortcodes

You can take any short code you want and insert it either into a blank post or you can insert it into the BlackStudio widget.

Text Widget

This is basically a blank box where you can either type words, insert HTML embed code, or use shortcodes. Sky's the limit!

Links Widget

Just like you can create new pages and posts, you can also create new links and assign them to a specific category. See "Links" in the backend menu. Once you create those links, this widget will pull them from the category you assign it, in the order you want. To re-arrange the order of links, change the "rating" of the links.

Form Widget

Insert a form that you already created, along with the form title and description (optional).

Widget Controller

By default, widgets will appear on every page (except the few pages that use the full-width template). If you want to limit that, check "widget controller" at the bottom of individual widgets, and select which pages and/or posts the widget should on. A word of warning: if you edit the widget later, you will have to re-select those pages.